Real Orlando Weddings: Love, Rhythm & Culture

Step into Desiree & Elby Edwards's love story in Central Florida.

3 hours ago

Orlando Magazine Staff,

Photography By Patricia Silverio.

Desiree & Elby Edwards

January 11, 2025 || Great Southern Box Co.

We met through a lovely place called: the World Wide Web, specifically on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) way before sliding in the DM’s were a thing! Most of my after-school AOL chat room hangs were with my best friend. We’d talk to internet friends from places like Japan or Poland, places my mind could barely imagine at the time.

One day, we thought we’d asked Elby where he was from, and when he said “Kissimmee,” we were shocked. Kissimmee was only 30 minutes away. We thought we were being punk’d. But nope, he even knew some of our mutual friends from Orlando. Talk about “a small world”!
From high school into adulthood, Elby and I lost and reconnected with each other every so often, but only as friends. After college, Elby and I just drifted apart… or so we thought.
In 2020 I came back to Orlando, thanks to COVID, and through fate, we found our way back to each other. When we saw each other again, after at least seven years, it felt like no time had passed. It was the same easy friendship, only this time, it became something more. We fell in love.
Getting married in 2025 felt like the perfect next chapter to our love story, after welcoming our son just a couple years prior. Planning the wedding felt seamless! We went into planning with the mindset that we didn’t want a traditional wedding. We wanted it to feel like one big party! I kept calling it “the wedding party” from day one. I tapped one of my close friends, who had retired from wedding planning, and she came out of retirement just for me!
Together, we started by sketching out what a typical wedding usually looks like, and then we flipped the script. We made a list of all the traditional elements that didn’t feel like us and reimagined them into something more celebratory and personal.
My husband and I are all about dancing + music, so we knew we wanted the night to be 80% dancing and 20% ceremony and we did just that! Since we’re both from the islands: Puerto Rico and Antigua, it only felt right to make our wedding a true celebration of love, rhythm, and culture!